The Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that South Carolina has the right to defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The pro-life state wants to be able to block taxpayer funding for the abortion business under Medicaid, but the abortion company sued to block that action.
Today, the Supreme Court ruled South Carolina has the power to block funding. In the decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court said Medicaid laws do not give individuals the right to bring federal lawsuits against states.
The high court’s ruling means that the state can direct Medicaid funding—funds intended to help low-income individuals obtain necessary medical assistance—to comprehensive health care rather than entities that exist primarily to perform abortions.
“[P]rivate enforcement does not always benefit the public, not least because it requires States to divert money and attention away from social services and toward litigation,” the court wrote in its opinion. “And balancing those costs and benefits poses a question of public policy that, under our system of government, only Congress may answer.”
South Carolina has sought to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program since 2018 because it kills babies in abortions and has a history of Medicaid fraud.
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster issued executive orders barring the pro-abortion organization from receiving reimbursements for non-abortion services like cancer screenings, STI testing, and contraception arguing that the funding just frees the abortion business to spend funds killing babies.
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Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Director of Legal Affairs and Policy Counsel Katie Daniel praised the ruling:
“By rejecting Planned Parenthood’s lawfare, the Court not only saves countless unborn babies from a violent death and their mothers from dangerously shoddy ‘care,’ it also protects Medicaid from exposure to thousands of lawsuits from unqualified providers that would jeopardize the entire program. Pro-life Republican leaders are eliminating government waste and prioritizing Medicaid for those who need it most – women, children, the poor, people with disabilities. Planned Parenthood was rightly disqualified. Multi-billion-dollar abortion businesses are not entitled to an unending money grab that forces taxpayers to fund America’s #1 cause of death: abortion.”
“States should be free to fund real, comprehensive care and exclude organizations like Planned Parenthood that profit off abortion and distribute dangerous gender-transition drugs to minors,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch, who argued before the court. “The American people don’t want their tax dollars propping up the abortion industry. The Supreme Court rightly restored the ability of states like South Carolina to steward limited public resources to best serve their citizens.”
The state argues that it should not be forced to fund an organization that performs abortions, even if Medicaid dollars are not directly used for them.
“South Carolina has a right to decide that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are not qualified to receive taxpayer dollars through Medicaid,” John Bursch, a lawyer for the state, told the court. “State officials should be free to determine that Planned Parenthood—a multi-billion-dollar activist organization—is not a real healthcare provider and is not qualified to receive taxpayer funding through Medicaid.”
The state’s position is that Planned Parenthood could regain eligibility stopping abortions—a choice the organization has rejected.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, which operates two abortion businesses in Charleston and Columbia, joined forces with a Medicaid patient to challenge the state’s decision.
Lower courts, including the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, have ruled in Planned Parenthood’s favor, citing a federal Medicaid provision that guarantees patients the right to choose their provider. The 4th Circuit’s March 2025 decision emphasized that South Carolina’s move violated this “free choice of provider” rule, a point reiterated by Planned Parenthood’s legal team during Wednesday’s arguments.
During oral arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed skepticism about whether Medicaid patients have a private right to sue to enforce their provider choice, a key issue in the case. Roberts questioned whether Congress intended for such lawsuits when it wrote the Medicaid law, while Kavanaugh suggested that allowing states to exclude providers could lead to broader restrictions, such as barring Catholic hospitals from Medicaid for not providing abortions.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, however, seemed more sympathetic to South Carolina’s argument, asking why the state couldn’t exclude Planned Parenthood if it deemed the organization unfit due to its abortion services.
Meanwhile, the court’s liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—defended the right of patients to sue, with Sotomayor warning that siding with South Carolina could “gut” Medicaid’s free-choice provision.
A ruling in South Carolina’s favor could embolden other states to defunding Planned Parenthood, potentially cutting off Planned Parenthood from public funding nationwide.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, South Carolina has banned nearly all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy when a baby’s heartbeat can easily be detected.
